Content uploaded by Peter Jones
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Peter Jones on Jan 21, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
SUSTAINABILITY IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY:
SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON CORPORATE CHALLENGES AND
RESEARCH AGENDAS
Abstract
Purpose-The purpose of this commissioned paper is to offer some personal
reflections on sustainability within the hospitality industry.
Design/Methodology/Approach-The paper begins by identifying sustainability as a
teasing paradox for the hospitality industry and a short discussion of the
characteristics of sustainability. The paper then explores the growing interest in
corporate sustainability and offers a review of the range of academic research into
sustainability within the hospitality industry literature. More generally the authors
suggest three fundamental sets of issues currently face the industry, namely defining
sustainability within the industry; materiality and independent external assurance;
and sustainable consumption and the industry’s commitment to continuing economic
growth; currently face the industry.
Findings-In addressing these three sets of issues the authors make a number of
suggestions. Firstly that definitions of sustainability within the hospitality industry can
be interpreted as being constructed around business imperatives rather than an
ongoing commitment to sustainability. Secondly that materiality and external
assurance are not treated comprehensively within the industry, which undermines
the credibility of the sustainability reporting process. Thirdly that the concept of
sustainable consumption and any critique of the industry’s commitment to economic
growth are conspicuous by their absence in the both the research literature on
sustainability and in sustainability reporting within the industry.
Practical Implications- The paper suggests that the hospitality industry may need
to examine how it defines sustainability, to extend its sustainability reporting to
embrace materiality and external assurance and to address the issues of sustainable
consumption and continuing economic growth if it is to demonstrate a worthwhile and
enduring commitment to sustainability.
Originality/Value- The paper provides some accessible personal reflections on,
sustainability within the hospitality industry and as such it will be of interest
academics, students and practitioners interested in the hospitality industry and more
widely within the business and management community.
Keywords-Sustainability; hospitality industry; sustainable consumption; materiality;
economic growth.
Introduction: Sustainability and the Hospitality Industry
In outlining future trends in the hospitality industry Deloitte (2014, p.41)
argued ‘Sustainability will become a defining issue for the industry in 2015 and
beyond. Rising populations and increasingly scarce resources will provide a
challenging business environment in which sustainability will need to be embedded
within all facets of the industry, rather than regarded as a standalone issue.’ At the
1
same time Sloan, Le Grand and Chan (2014, p.1) suggest that ‘a clear
understanding of the issues surrounding climate change, global warming, air and
water pollution, ozone depletion, deforestation, the loss of biodiversity and global
poverty is essential for every future manager in the hospitality industry.’
However throughout much of the hospitality industry the concept of
sustainability provides a teasing paradox. At the operational level, for example, on
the one hand the industry increasingly looks to deploy sustainability within both its
marketing messages and the customer experience while on the other hand the
headline accent is often on conspicuous, consumption which in many ways is the
antithesis of sustainability. In the Euro Disney Hotel in Paris a notice attached to the
bathroom doors reads ‘To preserve nature every little counts! Please leave the
towels you wish to change in the bathtub. Thank you for helping to protect the
environment.’ The menu at The Hewlett Arms in Cheltenham advertises ‘sustainably
caught British fish battered with homemade tartare and minted peas.’ At the same
time a travel magazine advertisement for the Gore Hotel in central London invites
potential guests to ‘be seduced by luxury in London’ while a newspaper
advertisement for a Viking Cruise offers the opportunity to ‘sleep easy in a
comfortable king sized bed’ and promises ‘whichever room you chose from the
spacious 270 sq. ft. Veranda Staterooms to our enormous Explorer suites- you can
enjoy supreme comfort and style.’
At the corporate level several of the major international hotel chains
increasingly stress their commitment to sustainability and to integrating it into their
core business strategy while pursuing continuing growth which makes a range of
demands on environmental resources (Jones, Hillier and Comfort 2014). Christopher
J. Nassetta, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Hilton Worldwide, for
example, endorsed the executive summary of the company’s Corporate
Responsibility Report by asserting ‘sustainability is a priority for Hilton Worldwide
and a central part of how the company does business’ (Hilton Worldwide 2012, p. 3).
In a similar vein the Intercontinental Hotel Group (2013, webpage) reports ‘we are
committed to designing, building and operating more environmentally sustainable
hotels.’ At the same time commitments to sustainability are often couched within the
idiom of continuing economic growth. Marriott, for example, emphasises ‘our
sustainability strategy supports business growth and reaches beyond the doors of
our hotels to preserve and protect our planet’s natural resources.’ In his statement
accompanying the Wyndham Worldwide 2010 Sustainability Report Stephen P.
Holmes, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer , claimed that the company’s
‘commitment to global sustainability comes at a time of both exciting growth and
serious economic challenges facing our industry’ (Wyndham Worldwide 2011,
webpage).
In the light of these apparent contradictions this paper offers some personal
reflections on sustainability within the hospitality industry and as such its aim is to
stimulate, challenge and provoke debate and discussion rather than to offer a
definitive and comprehensive review of either current corporate sustainability
strategies and practices or the academic literature on sustainability within the
hospitality industry. The paper includes an outline discussion of the origins and
characteristics of the concept of sustainability, a review of the growing interest in
corporate sustainability within the business world and an outline of the scope and
2
flavour of research on sustainability in both the general business and management
and the hospitality literatures, and a discussion of three fundamental sets of issues
the authors believe the hospitality industry needs to address in pursuing
sustainability , namely: variations in the way sustainability is defined within the
hospitality industry; materiality and independent external assurance; and sustainable
consumption and continuing economic growth.
Sustainability: Origins and Development of the Concept
The term sustainability has become increasingly widely used across many
walks of life in recent decades and in some ways it seems to be used to mean all
things to all people but ‘the idea of sustainability is not a mere mind game played by
modern technocrats, nor the brainwave of some tree-hugging eco-warriors … it is
our primal world cultural heritage’ Gruber 2012.p.13). The events and ideas
underpinning the concept of sustainability certainly have a long history. Du Pisani
(2006, p.83) provides a succinct summary of the historical roots and evolution of the
concept of sustainability and looks to demonstrate ‘how the idea of sustainability
evolved through the centuries as a counter to notions of progress’ (Du Pisani 2006,
p.83). He concludes by arguing ‘that the roots of the concept of sustainability can be
traced back to ancient times , but that population growth, increases in consumption
after the Industrial Revolution , and the danger that crucial resources such as wood,
coal and oil could be depleted boosted awareness of the need to use resources in a
sustainable way. Fears that present and future generations might not be able to
maintain their living standards stimulated mode of thinking that would inform
discourses which prepared the way for the emergence and global adoption of
sustainable development’( Du Pisani 2006, p. 87).
In recent times the terms sustainable development and sustainability began to
receive much more widespread attention and currency especially from the 1980’s
onwards following the publication of the ‘World Conservation Strategy’ (International
Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources 1980) and ‘Our Common
Future’ (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). Increasing
interest in sustainability reflects a growing concern about a range of major
challenges and problems facing societies, environments and economies at a variety
of spatial and temporal scales. These concerns include continuing population growth
and urbanisation and the pressures this is putting on natural resource consumption
and food supplies; climate change; growing levels of pollution; the loss of natural
habitats; and water stress and the increasing scarcity of water resources in some
areas of the world. In theory the concept of sustainability has become increasingly
seen as offering a potential solution to these problems. Diesendorf (2000, p.21)
argued that sustainability can be seen as ‘the goal or endpoint of a process called
sustainable development.’ Arguably the most widely used definition of sustainable
development is that provided in ‘Our Common Future’ namely ‘development that
meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs’ (World Commission on Environment and
Development 1987, p.43). That said defining sustainability is not straightforward and
there are a number of contrasting and contested meanings.
More specifically there are sets of definitions that are based around ecological
principles which focus on conserving natural resources and protecting fragile
ecosystems on which ultimately all human life depends. Goodland (1995, p. 3), for
3
example, defined environmental sustainability as ‘the maintenance of natural capital’
arguing that it ‘seeks to improve human welfare by preserving the sources of raw
materials used for human needs and ensuring that the sinks for human waste are
not exceeded in order to prevent harm to humans.’ There are also broader
definitions that include social and economic dimensions along with environmental
and ecological goals and to meet human needs in an equitable manner. For the
United States Environment Protection Agency (2014, webpage), for example,
‘sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature
can exist in productive harmony , that permits fulfilling the social, economic and
other requirements of present and future generations.’
Arguably more critically Hudson (2005) argued that definitions of sustainability
range from ‘pallid blue green to dark deep green.’ The former definition Hudson
(2005, p.241) suggests centres on ‘technological fixes within current relations of
production, essentially trading off economic against environmental objectives, with
the market as the prime resource allocation mechanism’ while for the latter
‘prioritizing the preservation of nature is pre-eminent’ (Hudson 2005). Hudson (2005,
p.241) also suggests that the dominant view of sustainability ‘is grounded in a blue-
green discourse of ecological modernization’ and ‘claims that capital accumulation,
profitable production and ecological sustainability are compatible goals.’ Further he
contrasts this view with the ‘deep green’ perspective which ‘would require significant
reductions in living standards and radical changes in the dominant social relations of
production’ (Hudson 2005, p.241). In a similar vein a distinction is often made, for
example, between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ sustainability and Roper (2012, p.72) suggests
that ‘weak sustainability prioritizes economic development, while strong
sustainability subordinates economies to the natural environment and society,
acknowledging ecological limits to growth.’
While sustainability has attracted widespread political support and has
become applied in many areas of human endeavour, the concept has also attracted
considerable criticism. Robinson (2003), for example, has summarized three sets of
criticisms. Firstly, that the concept is vague in that it means very different things to
different people and organizations. Clark (2005, webpage), for example, writing in
The Times newspaper argued “In the absence of any precise meaning the concept
of sustainability is pointless. It could mean virtually anything and therefore means
absolutely nothing.” Secondly that it attracts hypocrites who use the language of
sustainability to promote and defend unsustainable activities. Thirdly that it fosters
delusions in that it fails to recognize that the current rates of economic growth are
simply unsustainable and that it draws attention away not only from the need to
develop new ways of organising how people can relate to the natural world but also
from the need for fundamental and widespread social and political change. Indeed
Mansfield (2009, p.37) has argued ‘it is striking the extent to which politics–relations
of power- have been written out of the discussions about sustainability.’ However it is
important to recognise that a number of critics see the growing business interest in
sustainability as little more than a thinly veiled and cynical ploy, popularly described
as ‘green wash’, designed to attract socially and environmentally conscious
consumers while sweeping pressing environmental and social concerns under the
carpet. So seen, the moves towards sustainable marketing might be characterised
by what Hamilton (2009, p. 573-574) describes as ‘shifting consciousness’s’ towards
‘what is best described as green consumerism.’ This he sees as ‘an approach that
4
threatens to entrench the very attitudes and behaviours that are antithetical to
sustainability’ and argues that ‘green consumerism has failed to induce significant
inroads into the unsustainable nature of consumption and production.’ Perhaps more
radically Kahn (2010, p.43) argues that ‘green consumerism’ is ‘an opportunity for
corporations to turn the very crisis that they generate through their accumulation of
capital via the exploitation of nature into myriad streams of emergent profit and
investment revenue.’
As interest in sustainability has gathered momentum so a number of attempts
have been made to develop theoretical frameworks connecting nature and society
and to recognize that social and economic development cannot be viewed in
isolation from the natural environment. As interest in sustainability has gathered
momentum so attempts have been made to develop conceptual frameworks
connecting nature and society. A number of approaches merit attention. Todorov
and Marinova (2009, p.1217), for example, reviewed the models being developed to
conceptualise what they describe as ‘an extremely complex concept’ and they
present a five-fold classification namely: quantitative models, physical models,
standardising models, conceptual models, and pictorial visualisation models. The
first two of these models tend to be restricted to specific disciplines; the third is
concerned with the development and application of sustainability indicators while the
final two seek to link the environmental, social and economic dimensions of
sustainability. The authors acknowledge that the conceptual category of models is
very broad and they trace its origins from the work of the Club of Rome formed in the
late 1960’s and Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) through to much more recent
work on climate change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007). The
pictorial visualisation models adopt a simple three dimensional representation of
sustainability with the three dimensions, namely environmental, social and economic,
being represented as either pillars or in a Venn diagram as three overlapping circles.
While Todorov and Marinova (2009, p.1218) suggest that such models are ‘static’
they commend them as being ‘powerful in reaching a broad audience.’
A number of authors (e.g. Barter 2011; Zink 2005; Garvare and Johansson
(2010) have employed stakeholder theory to conceptualise sustainability. In simple
terms stakeholder theory is developed around the belief that companies should be
sensitive to the interests not just of their shareholders but also those of a wider
variety of stakeholders, including suppliers, customers and society at large, and that
in so doing they will ultimately be more successful. Wheeler et. al. (2003, P.16), for
example, suggested that ‘sustainability is a construct whose foundational ideas are
consonant with those of stakeholder theory’ and that ‘stakeholder concepts are
highly relevant and useful to thinking about sustainability.’ In developing a model of
stakeholder management for sustainability Garvare and Johansson (2010, P.737)
argued that ‘contemporary organisations must satisfy a variety of stakeholders’ and
Steurer et. al. (2005, P.264) explored the relationship between sustainability and
stakeholder theory and examined how ‘corporations are confronted with economic,
social and environmental stakeholder claims.’
There have been attempts to develop a more critical theory which embraces
the different and competing perspectives outlined above. Amsler (2009, p.127), for
example, has argued that ‘the contested politics and ambiguities of sustainability
discourses’ can be embraced to develop a ‘critical theory of sustainability.’ She
5
further argues that current debates should be located ‘within a broader tradition of
social criticism’ and that ‘competing interpretations of sustainability’ should be
viewed as ‘invitations to explore the complex processes through which competing
visions of just futures are produced, resisted and realized’ (Amsler2009, p.125)
Castro (2004) has sought to lay the foundations for a more radical theory of
sustainability by questioning the very possibility of sustainable development under
capitalism and arguing that economic growth relies upon the continuing and
inevitable exploitation of both natural and social capital.
Corporate Sustainability
During recent years the concept of sustainability has consistently moved
higher up boardroom agendas and growing numbers of companies increasingly
acknowledge sustainability as one of the emerging drivers of competition, and as a
significant source of both opportunity for, and risk to, long term competitive
advantage. Carroll and Buchholtz (2012, p. 4), for example, suggest that
‘sustainability has become one of business’ most recent and urgent mandates. ’In
reviewing current trends in corporate sustainability strategy and performance Ernst
and Young and the GreenBiz Group {2012, p.4}, for example, argued that ‘over the
past two decades corporate sustainability efforts have shifted from a risk-based
compliance focus where rudimentary, voluntary sometimes haphazard initiatives
have evolved into a complex and disciplined business imperative focused on
customer and stakeholder requirements.’ A survey of business managers and
executives undertaken by MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston
Consulting Group (2012, p.4) suggested that ‘70% of companies have placed
sustainability permanently on management agendas’ and that ‘despite a lacklustre
economy, many companies are increasing their commitment to sustainability
initiatives, the opposite of what one would expect if sustainability were simply a
luxury afforded by good times.’
A number of general factors can be identified in helping to explain this trend.
These include the need to comply with a growing volume of environmental and social
legislation and regulation; concerns about the cost and scarcity of natural resources;
greater public and shareholder awareness of the importance of socially conscious
financial decision-making; the growing media coverage of the activities of a wide
range of anti-corporate pressure groups; and more general changes in social
attitudes and values within modern capitalist societies. More specifically companies
are looking to publicly emphasize their commitment to sustainability in an attempt to
help to differentiate themselves from their competitors and to enhance corporate
brand reputation. That said Salzmann et. al. (2005, p.27) suggested that within the
business and management community many managers have an ‘insufficient
understanding’ of the ‘key arguments’ or the ‘business logic’ for ‘adopting corporate
sustainability strategies.’
The term ‘corporate sustainability’ is now in widespread use within the
business world and it is generally recognised as an ‘essentially contested concept’
(Visser 2007, webpage). Potentz (2011, webpage) claims ‘ask ten different experts
to define corporate sustainability you are likely to receive ten different answers’ and
suggests that ‘part of the problem in defining such an amorphous term arises from
its continuing evolution along with the ever-increasing entry of new stakeholders, an
6
inconsistent set of state and federal laws and the constant onslaught of newly
adopted federal and state laws.’ There are definitions which seem to emphasise
business continuity more than environmental and social sustainability. Dyllick and
Hockerts (2002, p.131), for example, define corporate sustainability as ‘meeting the
needs of a firm’s direct and indirect shareholders (such as shareholders, employees,
clients, pressure groups, communities etc.), without compromising its ability to meet
the needs of future stakeholders as well.’ Texas Instruments (2014, webpage), for
example, uses ‘the term sustainability primarily in relation to the operation of our
business. We believe responsible, sustainable business can meet current resource
needs without compromising the needs of future generations.’ More specifically
Texas Instruments (2014, webpage) claims ‘we work towards sustainability by
reducing waste and inefficiency in operations including our manufacturing facilities,
office buildings and distribution activities.’
While sustainability has become an increasingly important corporate concern
in the business world the hospitality sector has perhaps been somewhat slower to
react. Although Sloan et. al. (2013 P.24) reported that ‘the hospitality industry set
about incorporating the philosophy of sustainability in the early 1900’s’, but
Cavagnaro and Gehrels (2009, p.181) suggested that ‘the hospitality industry is not
considered to be one of the most sustainability aware sectors.’ That said just three
years later van Rheede and Blomme (2012, p.257) argued that ‘the hospitality
industry is starting to take responsibility for environmental sustainability.’ In a similar
vein Williams and Ponsford (2009, p.402) acknowledge that there is ‘growing
knowledge concerning how to move tourism towards greater sustainability’ but argue
that ‘progress in transitioning from concepts and principles to pan-industry practice is
limited’ and suggest that ‘this may be due to a lack of collective leadership amongst
tourism’s stakeholders.’ The vast majority of the reporting and research on
sustainability within the hospitality industry has been initially focused on the major
players in the sector and it is important to recognise that much less is known about if,
and how, the smaller companies, operators and individuals who make a significant
contribution to consumer provision within the industry are addressing sustainability.
The increase in corporate commitments to sustainability has been
accompanied by a growing volume of business and management research. While
much of the early work had a strong environmental emphasis it has increasingly
been broadened to address many dimensions of corporate sustainability including
the business case for corporate sustainability (e.g. Salzmann 2005); supply chain
management (e.g. Seuring et. al. 2008); innovation (e. g. Boons and Ludeke-Freund
2o13) entrepreneurship (e. g. Hockerts and Wustenhargen 2009); marketing (e.g.
Hult 2011); leadership (e.g. Jones et. al. 2014); human resource management (e. g.
Jackson et. al .2011); and management information systems (e.g. Dao et. al. 2011).
A range of research has also been undertaken across the extractive industries (e.g.
Franks et.al. 2010), in the manufacturing and service sectors generally (e. g.
Gunasekaram and Spalanzani1 2012) and on a number of sector specific studies
(e.g. on manufacturing Egilmez et. al (2013); on health care, (Pammolli et. al. 2011);
on retailing, (Jones. et. al. 2011); and on the global hotel industry, (Jones et. al.
2014).
While the aim of this paper is not to offer a detailed and forensic review of
these literatures a common theme runs through many of them namely that such work
7
is still in its infancy and much remains to be done. Jackson (2011, p. 102), for
example, suggests that ‘we seek to stimulate the field of human resource
management to expand its role in the pursuit of environmentally sustainable
business’ while Dao et.al. (2011, p.63) argued that ‘Management Information
Systems research on sustainability has been somewhat constrained in the realm of
green IT, which focuses mostly on the reduction of energy consumption.’ In a similar
vein Ashby et. al. (2011, p.498) claim ‘while there is clearly academic recognition of
the need to integrate economic, environmental and social sustainability, given the
broad nature of these fields thee is a tangible need to develop a better and more
focused understanding of sustainability specifically in relation to supply chains’ while
Dey et.al. (2011, p.1237) stress that ‘there has been very little work done to
understand the role and the importance of logistics in an organizations’ quest
towards sustainability.’ In a similar vein while Chabowski et. al. (2011, p.55)
suggested that ‘recent changes in the business environment have prompted
marketing scholars to pay particular attention to sustainability’ but that ‘there is a
paucity of research on the topic in premier marketing journals. Looking to the future
the authors suggest marketing research on sustainability should be focused on a
number of areas including relating a company’s sustainability focus, its social and
environmental focus and its legal and ethical intent to marketing assets which enable
these ‘marketing assets ‘ to ‘influence financial performance’ (Chabowski et. al.
2007, p. 63).
Research on Sustainability in Hospitality Industry Literatures
Research output on sustainability within the hospitality industry is growing
rapidly and a number of research agendas are receiving attention but rather than
attempting to review all of this research the current authors offer a selection of
illustrative examples to provide a flavour of the nature and range of work being
undertaken in this field. In providing an introduction to a recent text on sustainability
within the hospitality industry Jauhari (2014) focuses on a number of key themes
including designing green hotels, minimising energy consumption, the role of
technological innovation in achieving sustainability, sustainable tourism, marketing
sustainability to consumers, and how human resource management practices can
help to contribute to sustainability. A wide variety of themes and issues addressing
sustainability within the hospitality industry have emerged within the literature and a
few illustrative examples provide some insights into this work. Hassan (2000, p.239)
looked to develop ‘ a model of competitiveness that focuses on environmental
sustainability factors associated with travel destination’ and examined ‘the
relationships among all stakeholders involved in creating and integrating value
added products to sustain resources while maintaining market position relative to
other competitors.’ Williams and Ponsford (2009 p.396) drew attention to what they
describe as ‘tourism’s environmental paradox’ in that tourism simultaneously seeks
often fragile and sensitive environmental resources as ‘core ingredients and
compelling backdrops for the production and consumption of tourist experiences’
and ‘it also requires the protection of the ecological integrity and abundance of these
resources for sustained competitiveness.’ Williams and Ponsford (2009) stressed
the urgent need for a more systematic approach to evaluating and managing this
paradox.
8
Kasim et. al. (2014, p.1090), for example, have highlighted what they describe
as ‘the global phenomenon of the crisis in the quality and quantity of water supplies
and how tourism and hotels specifically may have contributed to this situation’ and
they propose a ‘water management framework… that leverages on the concept of
innovation’ and that offers examples of how ‘hotels of different sizes, with differing
financial, technical, knowledge and managerial capacities could address the
challenge of implementing water management and obtain commercial benefit.’ In
looking to examine ways of improving sustainability in the hospitality industry Gil-
Saura and Ruiz (2011) drew attention to how the application of information and
communication technologies could contribute to a reduction in energy demands.
Jayewardene et.al. (2013) outlined key sustainability issues and trends within the
Canadian tourism and hospitality industry and they examined the role of innovation
in addressing sustainability challenges within the industry. Ajagunna (2006, p. 253)
examined the impact of crime and harassment on the sustainability of the tourism
industry in Jamaica and suggested that it requires ‘immediate, radical changes in
attitudes, values and practices of the business community, the government, the
media as well as co-operation from local residents.’ Duarte and Borda (2013) have
examined the relationship between accessibility and sustainability focusing on
people with reduced mobility or limited mobility and how the industry is increasingly
looking to address the needs of these groups.
Sigala (2008) explored the value of employing general supply chain
management concepts within tour operators’ business in integrating sustainability
into tourism supply chains. Sigala (208, p. 1590) suggests that ‘sustainability in
tourism is a multi-sectoral and a multi-disciplinary concept’ and as such it ‘depends
on the performance of all products, suppliers and links within the tourism supply
chain.’ Following a case study of TUI Travel, one of the world’s leading leisure travel
groups, Sigala (2008, p. 1598) argued that applying supply chain management as ‘a
critical management tool’ had enabled the identification of a number of ‘good
practices that policy makers and tourism suppliers can adapt for enhancing tourism
sustainability.’ Under the headline title ‘From Farm to Fork’ O’Donovan et. al. (2012,
p. 500) investigated the direct supply chain relationship in the food industry in the
hospitality industry in the south east of Ireland. Although the authors stress that their
work is exploratory they suggest that there are strong ‘social, economic,
organisational and market rationales for a more concerted effort to promote higher
levels of direct supply chain relationships in the hospitality sector’ (O’Donovan et. al
2012, p. 500).
Prud’homme and Raymond (2013) explored the impact of sustainable
development practices in the hospitality industry on customer satisfaction in a
number of hotels in the province of Quebec in Canada. This research revealed that
customer satisfaction is positively influenced by the hotels’ adoption of sustainable
development practices and that hotel size and ownership also influence the level of
customer satisfaction. Manaktola and Jauhan (2007, p.364) explored ‘the factors
which influence the consumer attitude and behaviour towards green practices in the
lodgings industry within India’ and their research revealed that consumers ‘patronise
the hotels that have adopted green practices’ but that they are ‘not willing to pay
extra for these services.’ Zhang et. al. (2012) employed panel data from over 600 US
hotels to construct a performance measurement system for environmental
sustainability. Their investigation suggested that customer behaviour and
9
operational decisions are two key drivers of environmental sustainability and
revealed that ‘there is a positive link between environmental sustainability and
operating performance’ and that ‘the performance frontier varies across market
segment and location characteristics such as degree of urbanization and climate
change’ (Zhang et. al. 2012, p. 377). Rodriguez-Anton et. al. (2011) analysed the
role of sustainability management systems in the hospitality industry within Spanish
hotels. Their research revealed that hotels that principally look to target leisure and
tourist customers are particularly concerned about environmental management while
those which tend to primarily attract business customers are more concerned with
human resource management and labour relations than environmental issues.
A number of studies have also examined the nature of the sustainability
reporting practices within the hospitality industry. De Grosbois (2011, p.896)), for
example, reviewed the methods and scope of corporate social responsibility
reporting by the world’s top 150 hotel companies. They found that while a large
number of the selected companies reported on their commitment to a wide range of
sustainability issues including environmental goals, environmental quality, diversity
and accessibility, community wellbeing and economic prosperity, ‘much smaller
numbers of them provide details of specific initiatives and even less of them report
on actual performance achieved.’ Font et. al. (2012, p. 1544) looked to benchmark
the corporate social responsibility practices of 10 international hotel groups and their
research revealed that corporate systems are not necessarily reflective of actual
operations and that ‘environmental performance is eco-savings driven, labour
policies look to comply with local legislation, socio-economic policies are inward
looking with little acceptance of impacts on the destination and customer
engagement is limited.’ More specifically Bonilla-Priego et.al (2014, p.149),
developed a corporate sustainability reporting index embracing labour and human
rights, health and safety and environmental and economic dimensions for the cruise
industry though their research suggests that ‘companies disclose more management
than performance data’ and often ‘focus on soft indicators which are easy to mimic
and demonstrate posturing’ and that ‘reports echo the voice of the corporations and
not the demands of stakeholders.’
These specific examples offer some broad impressions of the diversity of
published work on sustainability within the hospitality industry. Such diversity would
seem to be a strength in that it suggests that there is vibrant academic enthusiasm
and concern for the role and importance of sustainability within the hospitality
industry. This in turn suggests that increasingly public corporate commitments to,
and concerns about, sustainability within the hospitality industry are being reflected
and pursued in the academy. However the diversity of academic research on
sustainability within the hospitality industry might be seen to be a weakness in that
such work currently seems to be fragmented in that it lacks both a coherent overall
structure and a clear research framework or to have identified a consistent
methodological approach or agreed future research agendas. It is for the academics
studying the hospitality industry and for its major research centres to work
collaboratively to develop, agree and drive forward such research agendas and
frameworks and there is some limited evidence that such frameworks are emerging
(e.g. Clarke 1997; Connelly et. al. 2011; van Rheede and Blomme 2012), though a
great deal more work needs to be done. More generally the current authors would
argue that three fundamental sets of issues face the hospitality industry. Firstly within
10
the industry definitions of sustainability lack clarity and precision and in many ways it
is difficult to escape the conclusion that commitment to sustainability is a simple
ubiquitous phrase covering a diverse range of environmental, social and
environmental issues and corporate agendas. Secondly the issues of materiality and
independent external assurance provide a major challenge if the industry’s approach
to sustainability is to demonstrate transparency, integrity and credibility. Thirdly
sustainable consumption and industry commitments to continuing economic growth
pose a complex, enigmatic and arguably unpalatable dilemma, not only for the
hospitality industry, but more widely for the dominant capitalist business model.
Defining Sustainability within the Hospitality Industry and Bridging the
Sustainability Gap
There are a number of issues in and around the way sustainability is defined
within the hospitality industry and that the industry must address if it is to
demonstrate its commitment to sustainability. By and large definitions of
sustainability within the industry are broad general statements and as Goldstein et.
al. (2012, webpage) suggested ‘while other aspects of the hospitality sector are
relatively straightforward to record and interpret, sustainability has remained
intrinsically difficult to quantify.’ Legrand and Sloan (2010, webpage), for example,
followed the World Commission on Environment and Development in defining
‘sustainable hospitality’ as ‘hospitality industry development and management that
meets the needs of today’s guests, hoteliers and stakeholders without compromising
the ability of future guests, hoteliers and stakeholders to enjoy the benefits from the
same services, products and experiences’ but major players within the industry itself
have generally been reluctant to publicly commit themselves to anything resembling
a precise, and therefore potentially measurable, definition. By and large their
approaches to defining sustainability are loosely couched within more general
business goals and strategies. The Walt Disney Company (undated, webpage), for
example, looks ‘to establish and sustain a positive environmental legacy for Disney
and for future generations. In doing so, the company is committed to minimizing its
overall impact on the environment while encouraging and activating environmentally
responsible behavior on the part of cast members and employees, guests and
business associates throughout the world.’ Marriott International (2014, webpage)
claims ‘our sustainability strategy supports business growth and reaches beyond the
doors of our hotels to preserve and protect our planet’s natural resources.’
While industry definitions, however loosely defined, generally tend to privilege
the environmental dimensions of sustainability, the major players also clearly include
the social and economic dimensions within their approaches to sustainability and
they certainly claim to address a wide range of environmental, social and economic
agendas. Environmental issues being addressed include climate change and carbon
emissions; water and energy conservation; waste management and recycling
initiatives; environmentally responsible sourcing; protecting and preserving natural
resources; minimising environmental impacts; and creating green construction
standards to guide new hotel construction. Social issues embrace diversity and
equality of opportunity within the workplace, health and safety issues, working
conditions within the supply chain, human rights, supporting local communities and
charitable giving while economic issues include employment creation, providing
11
value to customers and building shareholder value. Given this wide range of
sustainability commitments inevitably there may be inherent contradictions in
aligning what may in effect be contradictory and competing goals. Deloitte (2014, p.
46) recognised the tensions and argued that while ‘in the short term whilst brands
and operators will have to balance sustainability against other competing initiatives
aimed at gaining market share, sacrificing environmental responsibility should be
avoided.’ While Goldstein et. al. (2012, webpage), recognised that ‘sustainability
issues have nearly every aspect of the hospitality industry’ thus ‘necessitating the
alignment of environmental, social and economic factors to promote responsible
business operations over time’ in reality such alignments may prove difficult and at
best companies may have to make difficult trade-offs between pursuing wide ranging
sustainability strategies and programmes.
At the corporate level, for example, Marriott’s economic commitment to
‘reducing costs whenever possible’, for example, may threaten its commitment to
‘guest satisfaction’ and to ‘purchasing organic and responsibility sourced food…. and
establishing relationships with local farmers’ (Marriott International 2012, webpage).
At the individual hotel level managers working to meet what may be ever more
demanding operational and financial deadlines and/or to achieve performance
related bonuses may, when facing problems with staff scheduling, put employees
under pressure to work outside the hours that suit their work/life balance or to
release employees for educational training programmes. While these tensions are
common to many large companies looking to publicly pursue wide ranging
sustainability agendas they are at least partly exacerbated, in some sections of the
hospitality industry in that a number of the leading hotel chains, for example,
operate, in part at least, a business model based on managing and franchising
hotels rather than owning them. Within this model, the hotel company does not
manage employees, operations and maintenance and at Marriot, for example, the
focus is on working ‘with owners and franchisees to ensure that brand standards are
met’ and to ‘encourage sustainable operational practices’ (Marriott International
2012, webpage).Wyndham Worldwide (2011, webpage) reports that the majority of
its hotels are independently owned and operated by franchise owners and hotel
development companies and while they argue these owners and developers have a
vital ‘role in driving the direction of our global sustainability efforts’, in reality they are,
at least, one step removed from direct corporate control.
More critically definitions of sustainability within the hospitality industry can be
interpreted as being constructed around business efficiency and the search for
competitive advantage and as such can be seen to be driven as much by business
imperatives as by any concern for sustainability. Thus while many of the
environmental initiatives addressed in the sustainability reports are designed to
reduce energy and water consumption and waste emissions, for example, they also
reduce the hotel companies’ costs. In a similar vein the selected companies’
commitments to their employees focusing for example, upon educational training
programmes, diversity and health and safety at work all help to promote stability,
security, loyalty and efficiency within the workforce. However Deloitte (2012, p.4) has
argued that most companies select which environmental and social data to report on,
and as such effectively determine their definitions of sustainability, ‘based on their
own intuition and experience’ and on ‘one-to-one consultations with stakeholders or
stakeholder panels.’ Deloitte (2012,p.2) argues that such methods do not help
12
managers establish a relative ranking of sustainability issues ‘based upon what
matters most to the business.’ The world’s leading hotel chains might thus be seen
to have constructed sustainability agendas, which are driven largely, though not
necessarily exclusively, by their own commercial interests. The accent being on
efficiency gains across a number of environmental and social areas rather than on
maintaining the viability of natural ecosystems and reducing demands on finite
natural resources.
More generally it is important to recognise the ‘sustainability gap’ (Fischer
et.al. 2012, p.621) and the challenges if poses for research and for the transition to
sustainability. Fischer et. al. (2012, p.621) for example, claimed that ‘despite
increasing efforts to reach sustainability, key global biophysical indicators such as
climate change and biodiversity loss continue to deteriorate rather than improve.’ In
a similar vein Wick et. al (2012, p1.) suggested that while ‘public attention is
captivated by the entertaining media episodes of (environmental) characteristics and
hardly any attention is paid to these catastrophes’ underlying structures and root
causes.’ More critically Fischer et. al. (2012, p.621) argue that ‘ongoing failure to
move towards sustainability calls into question the current focus of research’. In
looking to address these concerns Fischer et. al. (2007, p.1) recommended two
research strategies. Firstly that ‘sustainability must be conceptualised as a hierarchy
of considerations, with the biophysical limits of the Earth setting the ultimate
boundaries within which social and economic goals must be achieved’ and secondly
that ‘transdisciplinary research programmes must confront key normative questions
facing modern consumer societies.’
The Importance of Materiality and External Assurance in Sustainability
Reporting
Reporting on corporate sustainability has become an increasingly important
business imperative as ‘companies are increasingly realizing that corporate
responsibility reporting is about more than just being a good corporate citizen ; it
drives innovation and promotes learning, which helps companies grow their
business and increases their organization’s value’ (KPMG 2011, p.2). In a similar
vein the Global Reporting Initiative (2013, p.4) suggests that sustainability reporting
‘encourages good management and serves as an incentive for the establishment of
a culture of corporate transparency.’ That said if sustainability reporting is to achieve
these goals then it is vitally important that companies publishing corporate
sustainability reports address the issues of materiality and independent external
assurance.
The concept of materiality can be traced to the auditing and accounting
processes associated with traditional financial reporting but it is increasingly seen to
be vitally important in sustainability reporting. Materiality is essentially concerned
with whether the issues, impacts and concerns in the CSR report are relevant and
important to stakeholders looking to make informed judgements about the extent to
which a company is discharging its social responsibilities. There is some consensus
that sustainability includes a wider range of issues and actions than financial
reporting. The Global Reporting Initiative (undated, webpage), for example, defines
material issues as ‘those topics that have a direct or indirect impact on an
organization’s ability to create, preserve or erode economic, environmental and
social value for itself, its stakeholders and society at large.’ More specifically the
13
Global Reporting Initiative (undated, webpage), stresses the complexity involved in
determining materiality suggesting that ‘the operations and activities of an
organization lead to positive and negative economic, environmental and social
impacts. Some of these sustainability impacts will be visible to stakeholders, who will
express an interest in them directly. But not all sustainability impacts will be
recognized by stakeholders. Some impacts may be slow and cumulative. Others will
occur at a distance from stakeholders, so that causal links may not be clear.’
That said the Governance and Accountability Institute (2014) has emphasised
that ‘from sector-to-sector and company-to-company, the process for determining
materiality will vary’ and suggest that ‘an energy company’s greenhouse gas
emissions is of high materiality to stakeholders, but at a pharmaceutical company,
product safety and responsibility would be considered by many to be higher up the
ranking of material sustainability issues.’ More specifically while the energy costs
generated by mass global travel might be thought to be one of the main material
issues within the hospitality sector the Governance and Accountability Institute’s
(2014) research reveals that product responsibility (particularly customer privacy),
labour practices (particularly training and education) and the impact of the industry
within society (particularly public policy) are ranked above environmental concerns
such as energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
In arguing the case for ‘sector specific materiality and sustainability reporting
standards’ Eccles et. al. (2012. p.8) have argued that ‘without standards it is difficult
for companies to know exactly how to measure and report on some dimensions of
sustainability performance’ and to make ‘comparisons of performance among
companies and over time.’ The authors suggest that while a wide range of public and
private sector organisations have issued guidelines on materiality for sustainability
reporting but they argue that ‘the proliferation of materiality guidance’ (for
sustainability reporting) ‘creates the perception of competing or duelling standards,
which can and arguably does create confusion among companies’ and that it has
contributed to ‘inconsistencies’ in reporting on sustainability (Eccles et. al. 2012.
p.10). The authors further suggest that while ‘not a panacea’ the development of
‘sector specific guidelines on what sustainability issues are material to that sector
and the key performance indicators for reporting on them would significantly improve
the ability of companies to report on their environmental , social and governance
performance’ (Eccles et. al2012, p 13). Eccles et. al. (2012, p.14) conclude that a
company’s failure to disclose material information in a comparable format has two
downsides namely ‘companies are not adequately managing important business
issues’ and ‘risk to investors’ portfolios, such as exposure to climate change,
remain hidden.’
The concept of materiality has received little attention within the hospitality
industry. Marriot (2012, webpage), for example, claims in the introduction to its 2011-
2012 Sustainability Report that the issues employed to determine materiality are
described in each section of the report, the sections on business practices, business
values, environment and society include no explicit details on how materiality has
been determined. More generally while Ricaurte (2012, p.18) has demonstrated the
complexity of materiality in a hotel’s carbon footprints he concluded that ‘further
industry discussion and research are necessary to arrive at standard forms of
calculating and communicating hotel carbon footprints.’ The structure and diversity
14
of the hospitality sector and the wide range of the environmental, social and
economic dimensions embraced by sustainability serves to highlight the scale and
the complexity of the challenges involved in developing, disseminating an dapplying
agreed materiality standards for sustainability reporting within the hospitality industry.
At the same time there is growing awareness that external independent
assurance of the information contained in sustainability reports is also vitally
important in providing comparability, transparency and credibility. In making the
case for increasing external assurance KPMG (2011, p.28), for example, suggests
that ‘as corporate responsibility reporting begins to play a larger role in the way
stakeholders and investors perceive corporate value, companies should increasingly
want to demonstrate the quality and reliability of their corporate responsibility data.’
Assurance, simply defined, as a process used to provide confidence as to the
degree of reliance that can be placed on the reported data, can be undertaken in a
number of ways. CSR Europe (2008, webpage), for example, identified four principal
methods namely ‘conducting assurance internally’, ‘stakeholder panels’, ‘expert
input’ and assurance by an ‘independent, impartial and external organisation.’
However the most widely used approach to CSR assurance is the commissioning of
an assurance statement by an independent external organisation and such an
approach would seem to have claims to provide credibility, integrity and reliability to
the reporting process.
An Assurance Statement is defined by CorporateRegister.com Limited (2008,
p.6) as ‘the published communication of a process which examines the veracity and
completeness of a CSR report.’ However the production of assurance statements is
seen to be problematic in that not only is there considerable variation between the
volume, character and detail of the information companies provide in their CSR
reports themselves, but there is currently little consensus on how companies should
collect, evaluate and report on their CSR data. In addressing the issue of appropriate
data collection CorporateRegister.com Limited (2008, p.6), for example, argued that
‘the underlying processes are often opaque and company specific, so it’s difficult to
know how far a report reflects actual performance’ and that ‘unless a company can
define its scope of performance disclosure, how can an assurance provider define
the scope of assurance.’ It is important to recognize that external assessors work to
one of two so called ‘levels of assurance’ namely ‘reasonable assurance’ and ‘limited
assurance.’ In the former ‘the assurors have carried out enough work to be able to
make statements about the report which are framed in a positive manner e.g. the
reported environmental data accurately reflect’ (the company’s) ‘environmental
performance’ (CorporateRegister.com Limited, p.14). In the latter ‘the assurors have
only carried out enough work to make statements about the report which are framed
in a negative manner e.g. nothing has come to our attention which causes us to
believe that the reported environmental data do not accurately reflect’ (the
company’s) ‘environmental performance’ (CorporateRegister.com Limited 2008,
p.14).Within the hospitality industry there is little evidence of independent external
assurance in the sustainability reporting process (e.g. Jones et. al. 2014) but it is
important to recognise that independent assurance can be a thorny and a costly
issue.O’Dwyer and Owen (2005, p.205), for example, claim that their work on 41
large UK and European companies ‘raises question marks regarding the
independence of the assurance process.’ At the same time O’Dwyer and Owen
(2005, p.224) have expressed concern over the ‘large degree of management
15
control over the assurance process’ arguing that management ‘may place any
restrictions they choose on the assurance exercise.’
A wide range of stakeholders are taking an increasing interest in sustainability
in the hospitality industry and in theory the external assurance of sustainability
reports should be important for a number of audiences including the general public,
customers, investors, employees, suppliers, regulatory bodies, trade unions, non-
governmental organisations and pressure groups. While RAAS Consulting (2009)
has argued that the two primary audiences are regulators and investors, the
assurance statements contained in the sustainability reports published by many of
the leading players within the hospitality industry give little indication of their intended
audiences. CorporateRegister.com Limited (2008, p.27) suggests that ‘statements
are supposedly for external stakeholders, but in practice they’re probably written for
internal audiences and the language of assurance reduces its appeal to the wider
audience.’ O’Dwyer and Owen (2005, p.224) contrast this approach with ‘the
governance structures underpinning the financial audit process’ arguing that
management’s ‘ reluctance to address the assurance statement to specific
constituencies implies that they are primarily providing value for management
thereby reflecting a perceived demand for assurance of this information from
management as opposed to stakeholders.’ Further O’Dwyer and Owen (2005, p.224)
conclude that unless this issue is dealt with ‘assurance statement practice will fail to
enhance accountability and transparency to organisational stakeholders.’
Independent external assurance can also be a costly and time consuming
process. The major players in the global hospitality industry are large complex and
dynamic organisations and capturing and storing information and data across a
diverse range of business activities throughout the supply chain in a variety of
geographical locations and then providing access to facilitate external assurance is
both a challenging and a potentially costly venture and one which many of the major
players currently choose not to pursue. Thus while a company’s carbon emissions
may be systematically collected, collated and audited as part of its environmental
CSR commitments, information on their contribution to local communities and levels
of staff satisfaction may be more difficult to define, measure and assure. At the same
time the myriad of small companies across the hospitality sector often have neither
the time nor the resources to consider or to report on the sustainability of their
businesses.
Nevertheless as a wide variety of stakeholders increasingly share an interest
in how both large and small companies within the hospitality industry are discharging
their social, environmental, economic and ethical responsibilities so the inclusion of a
robust and rigorous assurance statement within corporate sustainability reports helps
to enhance reliability and credibility. There is also an argument that external
assurance can ‘identify shortcomings in underlying data collection systems, thus
providing a roadmap for improvement to the reporting company’ (CSR Europe 2008,
webpage). More commercially the provision of an assurance statement might be
seen to enhance both a company’s reputation with its stakeholders and help to
promote its brand identity.
Sustainability, Sustainable Consumption and Continuing Economic Growth
16
The concept of sustainable consumption is conspicuous by its virtual absence
from the research literature on sustainability within the hospitality industry yet there is
a growing awareness that the need to move towards more sustainable patterns of
consumption is becoming increasingly pressing. Cohen (2010) has traced the
emergence of the term sustainable consumption to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992
and since then it has become an increasingly important policy element in national
sustainable development strategies. The World Economic Forum (2012, webpage),
for example, has stressed that ‘businesses must reshape demand by making
sustainable consumption more personal and relevant to consumers, leveraging the
power of technology to drive engagement and transparency and by redesigning
products and services to deliver increased value with fewer resources, thus making
the sustainable choice the default choice.’ However the World Economic Forum
(2012, p. 6)) has also argued ‘there is no silver bullet for achieving sustainable
consumption’ and this strikes a chord with Cohen’s (2005, webpage) argument that
that ‘sustainable consumption is the most obdurate challenge for the sustainable
development agenda.’
However there is little, if any, consensus in defining sustainable consumption
and it is widely recognized to be a contested concept (Seyfang 2004). A number of
definitions of sustainable consumption mirror mainstream definitions of sustainable
development. The United Nations Environment Programme (undated, webpage), for
example, defines sustainable consumption as ‘the use of services and related
products that respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life while
minimizing the use of natural resources and toxic materials as well as the emissions
of waste and pollutants over the life cycle so as not to jeopardize the needs of future
generations.’ More simply Dahl (1998, webpage) suggests that ‘sustainable
consumption refers to the need to stay within the global sustainability of resources.’
Jackson (2006, p.4) summarised a variety of definitions but noted that these adopt
different positions not only on ‘the extent to which sustainable consumption involves
changes in consumer behaviour and lifestyles’ but also on whether sustainable
consumption implies ‘consuming more efficiently, consuming more responsibly or
quite simply consuming less.’ Jackson (2006, p.4) further argues that ‘the dominant
institutional consensus’ is that sustainable consumption ‘is to be achieved primarily
through improvements in the efficiency with which resources are converted into
economic goods.’
There are broader and more fundamental issues concerning the tension
between the efficacy of looking to promote both sustainable consumption and
continuing business growth and the levels of resource consumption and the
environmental impacts attendant upon such growth. Here it is important to recognise
that there may be a variable relationship between economic growth and
environmental costs in that environmental costs are often higher in countries in the
early stages of economic growth and this can be problematic in establishing,
developing and promoting new tourist venues in developing countries. Many of the
leading international players within the industry are firmly committed to continuing
business growth. In its ‘2011-2012 Sustainability Report’ Marriott International, for
example, clearly commits itself to continuing growth as a preface to the provision of
details of its commitments and achievements to the environment, to society and to its
employees. More specifically the company emphasised that ‘growth is expected to
remain stable in 2012’ and that ‘as Marriott continues to grow over the next couple of
17
years, we anticipate that our managed and franchised hotels will generate
approximately 100, 000 new jobs’ (Marriott International 2012, webpage). Some of
the major players do not explicitly recognise any tension between sustainability and
economic growth while others publicly view it creatively rather than destructively. The
Wyndham Worldwide hotel chain, for example, claims that its ‘commitment to global
sustainability comes at a time of exciting growth’( Wyndham Worldwide 2011,
webpage). The Intercontinental Hotel Group recognises that there is a tension
between the continuing growth of tourism and the environment but argues that this
‘creates a space for innovation ’and suggests that this tension provides ‘an
opportunity to find innovative solutions to the environmental, social and economic
effects of our business’ (Intercontinental Hotel Group 2013, webpage).
Alternatively there are arguments that economic growth, dependent on the
continuing depletion of the earth’s finite natural resources, is incompatible with
sustainable consumption. This is epitomised by Jackson’s (2006, p.1) belief that ‘the
consumption patterns that characterize modern Western society are unsustainable.
They rely too heavily on finite resources and they generate unacceptable
environmental costs’ In a similar vein BSR, a consultancy that works with over 300
companies worldwide ‘to build a just and sustainable world’ has argued that ‘it is
increasingly clear that the consumption based model of economic growth cannot be
applied globally without causing immense environmental and economic disruption.’
In addressing the relationship between sustainable consumption and economic
growth Cohen (2010) makes the distinction between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ sustainable
consumption. Cohen (2010, p.110) suggests that the former is essentially focused on
changing consumer behaviour and gives rise to ‘policy recommendations built up
around green consumerism, eco-labeling and household investments in energy
efficiency’ and to strategies ‘grounded in product policy, lifecycle engineering, waste
and material minimization and eco-efficiency.’
More generally corporate approaches to sustainability are rooted in ‘the
orthodox view’ that ‘achieving sustainability is a technical issue’ requiring ’better
knowledge, incentives and technology’ (Mansfield 2009, p.37). Clark and Dickson
(2003) suggested that ‘the need for sustainable development initiatives to mobilize
appropriate science and technology has long been recognized’ and technological
innovation is widely seen to offer a means of promoting production efficiency. Many
of the leading players within the hospitality industry have certainly stressed the
importance of technological innovation in improving efficiency across the
sustainability spectrum. The Intercontinental Hotel Group (2014, webpage), for
example stressed its focus on seeking to ‘innovate concepts and technologies’ and
reports, for example, that it is committed ‘to designing, building and operating more
sustainable hotels through innovation.’ However Schor (2008, P.310) suggested
‘much of the literature on sustainable consumption has focused upon technological
solutions’ and claims that ‘advocates of technological solutions argue that more
intelligent design and technological innovation can dramatically reduce or even stop
the depletion of ecological resources, as well as eliminate toxic chemicals and
ecosystem disruption.’ Cohen (2010) argues that the ‘the modest returns from such
measures are incompatible with the ambitious targets that scientific experts maintain
are essential’ and as such he claims that weak sustainable consumption ‘is just
pretense.’ In a similar vein Schor (2008, P.310) argued that such approaches ‘ fail
to address increases in the scale of production and consumption, sometimes even
18
arguing that such increases are not unsustainable if enough natural-capital-saving
technical change occurs.’
From within the academic business community a number of authors have
offered reflections on possible transitions to more sustainable futures. In his
introduction to a series of essays entitled ‘Thoughts on Sustainability’ Peters (2009,
p.1), for example, suggested the essays ‘reflect a deeply rooted questioning of the
philosophical premises which have shaped Western Society, the belief in rationality,
cognition, expansion and consumption, supported by a world of unlimited resources.’
More specifically Peters (2009, p.1) asserted ‘we now rationally know that the
present path the world is on is not sustainable, yet we do next to nothing about it’
and then asks ‘is there something that in our nature, rather than in our nurture that
stands in our way?’ and ‘are we pre-programmed from the dawn of time of homo-
sapiens to think in the short term to consume as much as possible while the going is
good to favour our own clan over the common good?’
In looking to address, though not necessarily provide answers to these
questions Peters draws attention to the essays by Stubbings and by Kasozi.
Stubbings (2009, p.8), for example, argued that ‘we seem to have a “hard wired”
tendency to focus on the near future, whether that is the immediate future or the
length of our own lifetime’ and suggests that’ we have not been biologically equipped
by evolution to consider the long term multi-generational consequences of our
actions today and certainly not those consequences that are geographically as well
as temporarily removed from us.’ She calls for the development of ‘an ecological
mindset’ which , inter alia, would be ‘long termist’ and be focused on ‘thinking in
terms of eons and epochs, not end of month or next quarter’ (Stubbings 2009, p. 3).
In developing such a mindset she argues , somewhat paradoxically, that ‘we can
develop better awareness of the impacts of our choices on future generations by
paying more attention to the moment’ and suggests that ‘many of the decisions we
take day-in-day-out and in business do not require expert insight for us to assess the
likely consequences’ (Stubbings 2009, p.3). Kasozi (2009, p. 14) suggests that
growth has become ‘an unchallengeable imperative’, that questions of limitation,
utility or caution are often viewed as evidence of lack of imagination, insight or
courage’ ,that ‘growth is always good and always necessary’ and that challenges to
the growth idiom are ‘not the substance of true entrepreneurial spirit.’
More radically a number of social scientists offer critiques essentially based in
political economy. Mansfield (2009, p. 37), for example, argues that the mainstream
approaches to sustainability fail to recognise ‘the political nature of the socio-
economic processes that produce environmental degradation poverty and injustice-
in short the political nature of sustainability.’ In a similar vein Jackson (2006, p.20)
argued that ‘it is entirely fanciful to suppose that deep emission and resource cuts
can be achieved without confronting the structure of market economies.’ Equally
pointedly Castro (2004) has questioned the very possibility of sustainable
development under capitalism and argued that economic growth relies upon the
continuing and inevitable exploitation of both natural and social capital. Here
Fernando’s (2003, p.1) assertion that ‘capitalism has shown remarkable creativity
and power to undermine the goals of sustainable development by appropriating the
language and practices of sustainable development’ resonates loudly. More
generally this, in turn, echoes Dolan’s (2002, p.170) belief that ‘the goal of
sustainable consumption needs to be seen as a political project, recognising the
19
power relations between social groupings and between cultural value systems’ and
his warning that ‘this is the context within which the idea of sustainability will stand or
fall.’
Concluding Discussion
In concluding these personal reflections on sustainability within the hospitality
industry the authors offer a brief summary of their findings interwoven with a number
of thoughts on some of the challenges companies currently face in their corporate
sustainability reporting: on the evolution of research of sustainability research; on the
future research agendas within the hospitality industry; on how hospitality scholars
can contribute to broader research agendas within the business and management
fields; and on research methods: and on a number of practical and theoretical
implications. During recent decades the concept of sustainability has become
increasingly popular within society and across all sectors of the economy. However
defining the concept is not straightforward and there are a number of contrasting and
contested meanings. There are, for example, sets of definitions rooted in
environmental concerns which privilege the conservation of natural resources and
the protection of ecosystems and there are broader sets of definitions that
emphasise social and economic as well as environmental goals that look to meet
human needs in an equitable manner. A commitment to corporate sustainability has
certainly moved seemingly ever higher up boardroom agendas as a growing number
of companies acknowledge sustainability as a driver of competition and a source of
competitive advantage and look to report publicly on their sustainability strategies
and achievements. That said there is little or no consensus in defining corporate
sustainability and a number of definitions focus on business continuity rather than on
the environment and society.
More specifically the majority of the major players in the hospitality industry
are publicly committed to strategic corporate sustainability agendas and programmes
and many of them report publicly on their commitments and achievements, but there
are issues around the way sustainability is defined and operationalized within the
industry. Definitions of sustainability within the industry are broad and often do not
readily lend themselves to easy measurement. Many of the major players within the
hospitality industry claim to be addressing a wide range of environmental, social and
economic programmes but many of these programmes are often principally focused
on eco-efficiency gains, on developing and enhancing community relationships, on
encouraging loyalty and stability within the work force and on promoting and
disseminating positive corporate images. As such the hospitality industry can be
seen to be adopting a relatively weak approach to sustainability rather than pursuing
programmes to reduce the consumption of environmental resources or to maintain
the integrity of natural ecosystems. That said the major companies within the
hospitality industry would also want to stress the importance of recognising business
imperatives and in developing good management practice in running ‘their
companies successfully under present framework conditions while helping to lead
society towards the new framework conditions of sustainability.’ Nevertheless in
some ways the concept of sustainability is a paradox for the hospitality industry in
that while the majority of the major players claim a strategic commitment to corporate
sustainability they often promote conspicuous consumption which in many ways is
the antithesis of sustainability. More generally sustainability is a thorny issue for the
20
hospitality industry and in some ways the major companies need to address what
are complex, protean and challenging issues with caution.
Increasingly the corporate community is exploring how it can make its
reporting process more effective and how it can address value creation and a range
of critical questions seem likely to attract attention. These issues include improving
stakeholder engagement and promoting meaningful dialogue with stakeholders
identifying how stakeholders use corporate sustainability reports to impact on their
own decision making processes. This could drive behavioural change and bring
corporate sustainability narratives to life and demonstrate a greater willingness to
commission independent external assurance of their sustainability reporting
processes. While the emphasis in sustainability reporting is predominantly on
external stakeholders, many companies need to do more to engage with their
internal stakeholders namely their employees. Thus sustainability reporting should
be seen to be increasingly relevant to the business with the focus being on
embedding sustainability into the core business strategy, on enhancing the level of
engagement with sustainability and sustainability reporting at main board level and
on motivating middle managers to promote the value of pursuing sustainability
throughout the business. At the same time the major players in the hospitality
industry need to review the balance between accessibility and substance in their
corporate sustainability reporting. Social media would seem to have an increasingly
important role to play here and companies should look to integrate sustainability
reporting into their existing social media channels not least because it offers the
opportunity to raise issues around real time responses and to manage customer
expectations and interactions more effectively. Arguably most importantly of all the
major companies within the industry need to commission comprehensive external
assurance of their sustainability reports in order to improve the transparency and
integrity of the reporting process. More generally if the leading players in the
hospitality industry are genuinely keen be seen to take sustainability seriously then
they may need to be prepared to share their experiences and their commissioned in-
house research findings across the industry. However this may provide a dilemma
for companies which see their sustainability programmes and achievements as a
growing source of competitive advantage.
The growing commitment to corporate sustainability has been accompanied
by an increase in research by business and management and hospitality academics
and this work has embraced a range of themes and issues but in many ways this
work is in its infancy and much remains to be done. This research initially emerged
within the business and management literature, and was principally focused on the
environment, but as the concept of sustainability has gained increasing momentum
and embraced social and economic dimensions, so a research focus has emerged in
a wide range of the sub-disciplines under the broad business and management
umbrella. This diffusion of research activity is encouraging in that it clearly suggests
that sustainability is increasingly seen to be an important issue across the business
academy and as such it provides opportunities to investigate what may be both
subtle and substantial sustainability challenges in different sectors of the economy.
The hospitality industry, for example, provides a wide range of intangible services
and more specifically in travel and tourism looks to offer exciting, and often unique,
experiences and as such it may be seen to face a different set of sustainability
challenges to manufacturing industry, where the emphasis is on the production of a
wide range of tangible products.
21
A number of travel and cruise companies, for example, run high profile
marketing campaigns to promote visits to prized and fragile environments, such as
Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands, which provide unique environmental
challenges. As more parts of the world increasingly experience a wide range of
environmental stresses so research on fragile environments may offer powerful
insights which may have much wider currency across all areas of economic activity.
At the same the development of research traditions into sustainability within these
different sectors of the economy, and the publication of the findings of research
within these traditions in sector specific journals, can lead to fragmentation and there
is clearly a pressing need to assimilate and integrate research work undertaken
within the hospitality industry within the wider corpus of sustainability research and
arguably more importantly to make this research readily accessible to a wide range
of corporate audiences. Achieving such ambitious academic and corporate goals is
in itself a major challenge. A number of consultancies and business pressure groups,
such as Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCooper and GreenBiz, are, in part at least, helping
to fulfil the latter role but, to date, there has been limited progress in integrating,
publishing and disseminating the findings of academic research across the business
and management disciplines.
While there is some limited evidence that a more coherent structure for
sustainability research is emerging amongst hospitality scholars much work remains
to be done. More specifically a number of potentially fruitful future academic
research agendas can also be identified within the hospitality industry. In marketing,
for example, interest might include market research designed to explore what
sustainability means to customers, holiday companies and travel agents and
consultants, if and why such stakeholders think it is important, on the characteristics
of those consumers that care about sustainability and on the extent to which such
consumers are willing to change their patterns of behaviour. Here research might
profitably explore the importance of sustainability to stakeholders in both the
business travel and the tourist/leisure markets. Research might also focus on how
sustainability issues are managed with hotelier/supplier relationships and on the
locus of and impact of power within such relationships. Research into stakeholder
perceptions of the relative importance of external factors, for example, statutory
regulation, global economic change and reputation, and internal factors, for example,
efficiency gains in operating costs and the desire to recruit and retain creative and
talented employees, would be valuable in helping to more fully understand the
development of the leading hospitality companies’ commitments to sustainability.
Such research might be profitably complemented by investigations into the factors
influencing, and the challenges facing, those companies which have, to date, made
limited commitments to sustainability. Research into the development of information
systems designed to facilitate continuous improvements in sustainability are in their
infancy and here research would seem to offer fertile ground for future research.
Finally there is a need to investigate how more open and transparent commitments
to sustainability are reflected in profit margins, stock market performance and
reputation..
In pursuing these research agendas a wide variety of research approaches
and methods would seem to be appropriate and while large scale questionnaire
surveys can provide large volumes of data from large numbers of stakeholders more
qualitative approaches, based for example around focus groups and semi structured
interviews may provide richer insights into how awareness of, and attitudes towards,
22
sustainability influences consumer, supplier and employee thinking and behaviour. In
undertaking future research on sustainability within the hospitality industry
academics will continue to draw on, and contribute to, the theoretical frameworks
outlined earlier in this paper. This in turn will allow scholars in the hospitality industry
to more fully integrate their work into the wider body of knowledge on sustainability
within the business and management literature. More specifically stakeholder theory
would seem to offer particular promise. This will bring practical benefits in that if the
hospitality industry is to adopt increasingly more sustainable policies, protocols and
practices it will need to convince a wide range of stakeholders of the ultimate merits
of such an approach and that in turn may involve sacrificing short term gains for long
term business continuity. Researchers exploring sustainability in the hospitality
industry can profitably link their work to the growing body of work within the social
sciences outlined earlier and this may, in turn, encourage the development of more
critical perspectives in exploring the evolving, but complex and contested, role of
sustainability within economy and society. More generally transdisciplinary research
is clearly needed to address the ‘sustainability gap’ identified earlier in this paper and
to contribute to a wider and a shared understanding of the larger issues particularly
climate change.
More critically while the major players within the hospitality industry claim
corporate commitment to sustainability programmes and a growing number of
scholars within its academy are pursuing a wide range of research agendas the
issue of sustainable consumption and continuing economic growth are conspicuous
by their continuing absence from these programmes and agendas. While Mansfield
(2009, p.37) has argued that ‘sustainability is a wildly popular way of thinking about
how to simultaneously meet the needs of people and the environment by enhancing
human well-being without undermining ecological integrity’ the current authors find it
difficult to accept that the major players within the hospitality industry have any deep
seated interest or commitment to what has been described earlier as strong
sustainability. At the same time the authors’ perceptions of general consumer
behaviour, deeply rooted as it is in the continuing acquisition of goods and services
in seemingly ever increasing amounts and the increasing burgeoning of
consumerism, offer little reason to believe that consumers have any realistic appetite
for dramatic changes in lifestyle that a commitment to strong sustainability surely
demands. More generally corporate commitments to growth within the hospitality
industry are just part, albeit a growing part, of the wider trajectory of economic
growth within the global economy and are seen as central to globalisation.
As such the authors currently find little corporate or consumer appetite for a
transition to a more genuinely sustainable future. Such a scenario seems currently
politically unacceptable. Reissch et. al. (2008, p.2), for example, argued that
although moving towards sustainable consumption is a major policy agenda ‘growth
of income and material throughput by means of industrialization and mass
consumerism remains the basic aim of western democracy.’ In a similar vein the
European Commission (2012, p.9) has recognised that ‘sustainable consumption is
seen by some as a reversal of progress towards greater quality of life’ and that ‘it
would involve a sacrifice of current, tangible needs and desires in the name of an
uncertain future.’ This in turn also reflects the overwhelmingly dominant thinking
within orthodox economics that growth is good and there is little enthusiasm to
promote or move towards an economic system that does not rely on growth. While
there is, at best, only limited thinking on what such an alternative model would look
23
like or how it would function, there are nevertheless growing common sense
concerns that the growth model must fail at some point in the future. Although the
increasing incidence of extreme weather events across the world are often seen as
harbingers of seemingly inevitable climate change, they quickly seem to be largely,
though not entirely forgotten, and simply brushed aside. In truth it may require a truly
cataclysmic global event to trigger collective, rather than individual, self-interest, to
precipitate widespread corporate and consumer engagement and action on
sustainability.
REFERENCES
Ajagumma, I. (2006) ‘Crime and harassment in Jamaica: consequences for
sustainability of the tourism industry’, International Journal of Contemporary
Hospitality Management’, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp.253-259
Ashby, A., Leat, M. and Hudson Smith, M. (2011) ‘Making connections: a review of
supply chain management and sustainability literature’, Supply Chain Management
an International Journal, Vol. 17, No. 5, pp.497-516
Amsler, S. S. (2009) ‘Embracing the Politics of Ambiguity: Towards a Normative
Theory of Sustainability’, Capitalism, Nature and Socialism, Vol.20, No. 2, pp.111-
125.
Barter, M. (2011) ‘Stakeholder theory: pictures, the environment and sustainable
development’-do we have enough pictures in our heads or do we need something
different’, Asia Pacific work in Progress Research Paper Series,
www.griffith.edu.au/data/assets/pdf_file/0009/378693/APWIPPs_Issue-4.pdf last
accessed 03/11/2014
Bonilla-Priego, M.J., Font, X. and del Rosario, P.O. ( 2014) ‘Corporate sustainability
reporting index and baseline data for the cruise industry’, Tourism Management. Vol.
44, pp.149-160
Boons, F. and Lüdeke-Freund, F. (2013) ‘Business models for sustainable
innovation:
state-of-the-art and steps towards a research agenda’, Journal of Cleaner
Production, Vol. 45, pp. 9–19.
CSR Europe (2008) ‘CSR Assurance Statements’,
http://www.csreurope.org/data/files/2008_csr_assurance_statements__csr_europe_
helpdesk.pdf last accessed 24/10/2014
Cavagnaro, E. and Gehrels, S. A. (2009) ‘Sweet and Sour Grapes: Implementing
Sustainability in the Hospitality Industry-A Case Study, Vol. 7, No.2-3 pp.181-195
Carroll, A. B. and Buchholtz, A. K. (2012) ‘Business and Society: Ethics,
Stakeholders and Sustainability Management’, South Western, Nashville TN
Castro, C. (2004) ‘Sustainable Development: Mainstream and Critical Perspectives’,
Organisation and Environment, Vol. 17, No.2, pp. 195-225.
24
Chabowski, B. R., Mena, J. A. and Gonzalez-Padron, T.L. (2011) ‘The structure of
sustainability research in marketing, 1958-2008: a basis for future research
opportunities’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 39, pp. 55-70
Clark, R. (2005) ‘What is Sustainability?’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5840
43.ece last accessed 10/11/2014
Clark, W.C. and Dickson, N.M. (2003) ‘sustainability science: The emerging research
program’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States of
America, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 8058061, http://www.pnas.org/content/100/14/8059.full
last accessed 10/11/2014
Clarke, J. (1997) ‘A framework of approaches to sustainable tourism’ Journal of
Sustainable Tourism, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 224-235
Cohen, M. J. (2005) ‘Sustainable consumption in a national context: an introduction
to the symposium’, Sustainability: Science, Policy and Practice, Vol. 1, No. 1,
http://sspp.proquest.com/archives/vol1iss1/0410-008.cohen.html last accessed
10/11/2014
Cohen, M.J. (2010) ‘The international political economy of (un)sustainable
consumption and the global financial crisis’, Environmental Politics Vol. 19, No. 1,
pp. 107-126
Connelly, B. L., Ketchen Jnr, D.J. and Slater, S. F. (2011) ‘Towards a” theoretical
toolbox” for sustainability research in marketing’, Journal of the Academy Marketing
Science Vol. 39, No. 1 pp. 86-100.
CorporateRegister.com Limited (2008) ‘Assure View: The CSR Assurance Statement
Report’, http://www.sustaincommworld.com/pdfs/AssureView.pdf last accessed
11/11/2014
Dahl, A.(1998) ‘Sustainable consumption and true prosperity’, http://bahai-
library.com/dahl_sustaianble_consumption_prosperity last accessed 11/11/2014
Dao, V., Langella, I and Carbo, J. (2011) ‘From green to sustainability: Information
Technology and an integrated sustainability framework’, The Journal of Strategic
Information Systems’, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 63-79
De Grosbois, D. (2012) ‘Corporate social responsibility reporting by the global hotel
industry: Commitments, initiatives and performance’, International Journal of
Hospitality Management’, Vol. 31, pp. 896-905
Deloitte (2012) ‘Going from Good to Great’, http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-
UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/IMOs/Corporate%20Responsibility
%20and%20Sustainability/us_scc_Materiality_09132012pdf.pdf last accessed
03/10/2014
25
Deloitte (2014) ‘Hospitality 2015: Game Changers or Spectators’,
http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedKingdom/Local
%20Assets/Documents/Industries/THL/uk_thl_Hospitality2015v2.pdf last accessed
03/11/2014
Dey, A., LaGuardia, P. and Srinivasan, M. (2011) ‘Building sustainability in logistics
operations: a research agenda’, Management Research Review, Vol. 31, No. 11, pp.
1237-1259
Diesendorf, M. (2000) ‘Sustainability and Sustainable Development’, in
‘Sustainability: The corporate challenge of the 21st century’, Dunphy, D.,
Beneveniste, J., Griffiths, A. and Sutton, P. eds. Allen and Unwin, Sydney,
Dolan, P. (2002) ‘The Sustainability of Sustainable Consumption’, Journal of
Macromarketing, Vol. 22, pp.170-181.
Du Pisani, J. A. (2006) ‘Sustainable development – historical roots of the concept’,
Environmental Sciences, vol. 3. No. 2, pp.83-96
Duarte, D.C. and Borda, G.Z. (2013)’Accessibility and sustainability: the experience
of hospitality in Brasilia’, Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa am Tourismo, Vol. 7, No. 3,
pp.365-383
Dyllick, T. and Hockerts, K. (2002) ‘Beyond the Business Case for Corporate
Sustainability’, Business Strategy and the Environment, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 130-141.
Eccles, R. G. (2012) ‘The Need for Sector-Specific Materiality and Sustainability
Reporting Standards’, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp.8-14
Egilmez, G., Kucukvar, M. and Tatari, O. (2013) Sustainability Assessment of U.S.
Manufacturing Sectors: An Economic Input Output-based Frontier Approach’ Journal
of Cleaner Production, Vol. 53, No.15, pp.91-102
Ernst &Young and Greenbiz (2012) ‘Six growing trends in corporate sustainability’,
http://www.greenbiz.com/sites/default/files/1112-
1315117_CCaSS_SixTrends_FQ0029_lo%20res%20revised%203.7.2012.pdf last
accessed 10/11/2014
European Commission (2012) ‘Policies to encourage sustainable consumption’,
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/eussd/pdf/report_22082012.pdf last accessed
03/11/2014
Fernando, J.L. (2003) ‘Rethinking Sustainable Development’, The Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science, Sage Publications, London,
http://www.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?
currTree=Subjects&level1=B00&prodId=Book227408 last accessed 15/03/2014
Fischer, J., Manning, A.D., Steffen, W., Rose, D.B., Daniell, K., Felton, A., Garnett,
S., Gilna, B., Heinsohn, R., Lindenmayer, D. B., MacDonald, B., Mills, F., Newell, B.,
Reid, J., Robin, L., Sherren, K. and Wade, A. (2007) ‘Mind the sustainability gap’,
Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 22, No. 12, pp.621-624
26
Font, X., Walmsley, A., Cogotti, S., McCombes, L. and Hausler, N. (2012) ‘Corporate
social responsibility: The disclosure-performance gap’, Tourism Management, Vol.
33, pp.1544-1553
Franks, D. M., Brereton, D. and Moran, c. (2010) ‘Managing cumulative impacts of
coal mining on regional communities and environments in Australia’, Impact
Assessment, and Project Appraisal, Vol. 28, no. 4, pp.299-312
Gavare, R. and Johansson, P. (2010) ‘Management for sustainability- a stakeholder
theory’, Total Quality Management, Vol. 21, No. 7, pp.737-744
Gil-Saura, I. and Ruiz, M.E. (2011) ‘Tools for improving environmental sustainability
in the hospitality industry’, CAB Reviews: Perspectives in Agriculture, Veterinary
Science, Nutrition and Natural Resources Vol. 6 No. 13 pp. 1-6
Global Reporting Initiative (2013) ‘Report or explain: A smart EU policy approach to
non-financial information disclosure’,
https://www.globalreporting.org/resourcelibrary/GRI-non-paper-Report-or-Explain.pdf
last accessed 03/11/2013
Global Reporting Initiative (undated) ‘Sustainability topics for sectors: what do
stakeholders want to know’,
https://www.globalreporting.org/resourcelibrary/sustainability-topics.pdf last
accessed 03/11/2014
Goldstein, K.A. and Primlani, R. V. (2012) ‘Current trends and opportunities in hotel
sustainability’, www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4054752.html last accessed 12/11/2014
Goodland, R. (1995) ‘The Concept of Environmental Sustainability’, Annual Review
of Ecology and Systematics, Vol. 26, pp. 1-24
Grober, U. (2012) ‘Sustainability: a Cultural History’ (Translated by Ray
Cunningham), Green Books, Cambridge.
Gunasekaram, A., and Spalanzani, A. (2011) ‘Sustainability of manufacturing and services:
Investigation for research and applications’, International Journal Production Economics,
Vol. 140, No.1, pp. 35-47
Hamilton, C. (2009) ‘Consumerism, self-creation and prospects for a new ecological
consciousness’, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 18, No. 6, pp. 571-575.
Hassan, S. S. (2000) ‘Determinants of Market competitiveness in an Environmentally
Sustainable Tourist Industry’, Journal of Travel Research, vol. 36, no 3, pp. 239-245
Hilton Worldwide (2012) ‘Travel With Purpose: Corporate Responsibility Report
Executive Summary’,
http://cr.hiltonworldwide.com/downloads/2011_Hilton_CR_Report.pdf last accessed
11/11/2014
Hockerts, K. and Wustenhargen, R. (2009) ‘Greening Goliaths versus emerging
Davids- Theorizing about the role of incumbents and new entrants in sustainable
entrepreneurship’, Journal of business Venturing, Vol. 25, pp. 481-492
27
Hudson, R. (2005) ‘Towards sustainable economic practices, flows and spaces: or is
the necessary impossible and the impossible necessary?’, Sustainable
Development, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp.239-252.
Hult, G.T. M. (2011) ‘Market–Focused Sustainability: Market Orientation Plus’,
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 39, No. 1, pp.1-6
Intercontinental Hotels Group (2013) ‘Corporate responsibility Report’,
http://www.ihgplc.com/files/pdf/2012_cr_report.pdff last accessed 11/11/2014
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) ‘Climate Change 2007:
Synthesis Report,
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_rep
ort_synthesis_report.htm last accessed 11/11/2014
International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (1980)
‘World conservation Strategy’, https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/WCS-
004.pdf last accessed 23/11/2014
Jackson, S.E., Renwick, W.S. , Jabbour, C.J. C. and Muller-Camen, M. (2011) ‘State-of-the Art and
Future Directions for Green human Resource Management: Introduction to Special Issue’, Zeitschrift
fur Personalforschange, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 99-116
Jackson, T. (2006) ‘Readings in sustainable consumption’ in Jackson, T. 9ED.) The Earthscan reader
in Sustainable Consumption’, Earthscan, London.
Jauhari, V. (2014) ‘Managing Sustainability in the Hospitality and Tourism Industry: Paradigm and
Direction s for the Future’, Apple Press, Oakville Canada.
Jayawardena, C., Pollard, A. , Chort,V., Choi, C. and Kibicho, W. (2013) ‘Trends and sustainability in
the Canadian tourism and hospitality industry’, Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes’, Vol. 5,
No. 2, pp. 132-150
Jones, P. , Comfort ,D. and Hillier, D. (2011) ‘Sustainability in the global shop window’, International
Journal of Retail and Distribution Management’ Vol. 39, No. 4, pp.256-271
Jones, P., Hillier, D. and Comfort, D. (2014) ‘Sustainability in the Global Hotel Industry’, International
Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp.5-17
KPMG (2011) ‘KPMG International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting’,
http://www.kpmg.com/Global/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/corporate-
responsibility/Documents/2011-survey.pdf last accessed 11/11/2014
Kahn, R. (2010) ‘Producing Crisis: Green Consumerism as an Ecopedagogical
Issue’, in ‘Critical Pedagogies of Consumption’, eds. Sandlin, J. A. and McLaren, P.,
Routledge, New York.
Kasim, A., Gursoy, D., Okumus, F. and Wong, A. (2014) ‘The importance of water
management in hotels,; A framework for sustainability through innovation’, Journal of
Sustainable Tourism, Vo. 22, No. 7, pp.1090-1107
Kasozi, A. S. (2009 ) ‘Intelligent Growth’, in Ashridge, Ed. ’Thoughts on
Sustainability. Volume 1 Principles learning into process’,
28
http://tools.ashridge.org.uk/Website/Content.nsf/FileLibrary/6372C804BC54451A802
5758900423F55/$file/ACBAS_Thought_Pieces_Booklet_web.pdf last accessed
10/11/2014
Legrand, W. and Sloan, P. (2009) ‘What is sustainable hospitality?’
http://www.sustainabilityinhospitality.com/?p=1110 last accessed 10/11/2014
Manaktola, K. and Jauhari, V. (2007)’ Exploring consumer attitude and behaviour
towards green practices in the lodging industry in India’, International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 19,No. 5, pp. 364-377.
Marriott (2012) ‘2011-2012 Sustainability Report’
http://www.marriott.com/Multimedia/PDF/CorporateResponsibility/MarriottSustainabili
tyReport_2011and2012condensed4MB.pdf last accessed 11/11/2014
MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group (2012)
‘Sustainability Nears a Tipping Point’,
http://www.sustainabilityprofessionals.org/system/files/MIT-SMR-BCG-Sustainability-
Nears-a-Tipping-Point-Winter-2012.pdff last accessed 11/11/2014
Manaktola, K. and Jauhan, V. (2007) ‘Exploring Consumer Attitudes and Behaviour
Towards Green Practices in the Lodgings Industry in India’, International Journal of
Contemporary hospitality Management, vol. 19, no. 5, pp.365-377
Mansfield, B. (2009) ‘Sustainability’ in ‘A Companion to Environmental Geography’,
Eds.Castree, N., Demeriff, D., Liverman, D. and Rhoads, B., pp. 37-49, Wiley,
London.
Meadows, D., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J. and Behrens, W. (1972) ‘The Limits to
Growth’, Universe Books, New York.
O’Donovan, I., Quinlan, T. and Barry, T. (2012) ‘From farm to fork: Direct supply
chain relationship in the hospitality industry in the south east of Ireland’, British Food
Journal, Vol. 114, No. 4, pp.500-513
O’Dwyer, B. and Owen, D. (2005) ‘Assurance statement practice in environmental,
social and sustainability reporting: a critical evaluation’, The British Accounting
Review, Vol. 37, pp. 205-229.
Pammolli, F., Massimo, R. and Magazzini, L. (2012) ‘The sustainability of European
health care systems: Beyond income and aging’, The European Journal of Health
Economics, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 623-634
Peters, K. (2009) ‘Introduction’, in Ashridge, Ed. ’Thoughts on Sustainability. Volume
1 Principles learning into process’,
http://tools.ashridge.org.uk/Website/Content.nsf/FileLibrary/6372C804BC54451A802
5758900423F55/$file/ACBAS_Thought_Pieces_Booklet_web.pdf last accessed
10/11/2014
29
Polentz, M. C. (2011) ‘The Real World Application of Corporate Sustainability’,
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2011/07/17/the-real-world-application-of-
corporate-sustainability/ last accessed 17/04/2014
Prud’homme, B. and Raymond, L. (2013) ‘Sustainable development practices in the
hospitality industry: An empirical study of their impact on customer satisfaction and
intentions’, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol. 34, pp. 116-126
RAAS Consulting (2009) ‘The Role of the Assurance Provider’,
http://raasconsulting.com/CSRAssuranceIssues.aspx last accessed 18/05/2014
Ricaurte, E. (2012) ‘Determining Materiality on hotel Carbon Footprinting: What
counts and What Does Not’, Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research,
https://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-16340.html
last accessed 10/11/2014
Reisch, L., Spash, C. L. and Bietz, S. (2008) ‘sustainable consumption and mass
communication: a German experiment’, www.csiro.au/files/files/pm9m.pdff last
accessed 10/11/2014
Rodriguez-Anton, J.M., Alonso-Almeida, M.d-M., Celemin, M.S. and Rubio, L. (2012)
‘Use of different sustainability management systems in the hospitality industry. The
case of Spanish hotels’, Journal of cleaner Production, Vol. 22, pp.76-84
Roper, J. (2012) ‘Environmental risk, sustainability discourses and public relations’,
Public Relations Inquiry, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp.69-87
Saltzmann, O., Jonescu-Somers, A. and Steger, U. (2005) ‘The Business Case for
Corporate Sustainability: Literature Review and Research Options’, European
Management Journal, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 27-36
Schor, J. B. (2005) ‘Prices and quantities: unsustainable consumption and the global
economy’, Ecological Economics, Vol. 55, pp.309-320,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800905003204# last
accessed 27/11/2013
Seuring, S., Sarkis, J., Muller, M. and Rao, P. (2008) ‘Sustainability and supply chain
management; An introduction to the special issue’, Journal of Cleaner Production,
Vol. 16, pp. 1545-1551
Seyfang, G. (2004)’Local organic food: the social implications; the social
implicationsof sustainable consumption’,
http://www.cserge.ac.uk/sites/default/files/edm_2004_09.pdf last accessed
10/11/2014
Sigala, M. (2008) ‘A supply chain management approach for investigating the role of
tour operators on sustainable tourism: the case of TUI’, Journal of cleaner
Production,
30
Sloan, P., Legrand, W. and Chen, I.J. (2013) ‘Sustainability in the hospitality
industry: principles of sustainable operations’, Routledge, London.
Steurer, R., Langer, M.E. Konrad, A. and Martinuzzi, A. (2005) ‘corporations,
stakeholders and sustainable development1: a theoretical explanation of business-
society relations’, Journal of business Ethics, vol. 51, no. 3, pp.263-281
Stubbings, A. (2009) ‘An Ecological Mindset: Developing A New Level of
Consciousness’ in Ashridge, Ed. ’Thoughts on Sustainability. Volume 1 Principles
learning into process’,
http://tools.ashridge.org.uk/Website/Content.nsf/FileLibrary/6372C804BC54451
A8025758900423F55/$file/ACBAS_Thought_Pieces_Booklet_web.pdf last
accesssed10/11/2014
Texas Instruments (2014) ‘2012 Corporate Citizenship Report’,
http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/csr/2012/company/sustainability.shtml last accessed
03/04/2014
The Walt Disney Company (undated) ‘Environmental Policy’,
http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/citizenship/policies/environmental-policy last
accessed 21/09/2104
Todorov, V. I. and Marinova, D. (2009) ‘Models of Sustainability’, presented at the
World IMACS/MODSIM Congress, Cairns, Australia,
http://www.mssanz.org.au/modsim09/D2/todorov_D2a.pdf last accessed 13/04/2014
United Nations Environment Programme (undated) ‘Sustainable consumption’,
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?menu=204 last accessed
11/11/2014
United States Environment Protection Agency (2014) ‘Sustainability’,
http://www.epa.gov/sustainability/basicinfo.htm last accessed 07/05/2014
van Rheede, A. and Blomme, R.J. (2012) ‘Sustainable Practices in Hospitality: A
Research Framework’, in Chen, J. S. (ed.) Advances in Hospitality and Leisure
(Advances in Hospitality and Leisure, Volume 8) Emerald Group Publishing Limited,
pp. 257-271
Visser, W. (2007) ‘Corporate Sustainability and the Individual’, Cambridge
Programme for Sustainability Leadership Paper, Series No. 1,
http://www.waynevisser.com/papers/corporate-sustainability-and-the-individual last
accessed on 28/10/2014
Wick, A., Farioli, F., Fukushi, K. and Yarime, M. (2012) ‘Sustainability science:
bridging the gap between science and society’, Sustainability Science, Vol. 7, No. 1,
pp. 1-4
Wheeler, D, Colbert, B. and Freeman, R. E. (2003) ‘focusing on value; reconciling
corporate social responsibility, sustainability and a stakeholder approach in a
network world’, Journal of General Management, Vol. 61, No. 3, pp. 1-28
31
Williams, P.W. and Pinsford, I. F. (2009) ‘Confronting tourism’s environmental
paradox: Transitioning for sustainable tourism’, Futures, Vol. 41, pp. 396-404
World Business Council for Sustainable Development (2010) ‘Vision 2050’,
http://www.wbcsd.org/pages/edocument/edocumentdetails.aspx?
id=219&nosearchcontextkey=true last accessed 13/01/2015
World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) ‘Our Common Future’,
http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02.htm last accessed 10/11/2014
World Economic Forum (2012) ‘More with less: scaling sustainable consumption and
resource efficiency’, http://www.weforum.org/reports/more-less-scaling-sustainable-
consumption-and-resource-efficiency last accessed 10/11/2014
Wyndham Worldwide (2011) ‘Wyndham Worldwide Sustainability Report 2009-2010’
http://www.wyndhamworldwide.com/sites/pdfs/green/Final-Wyndham-Sustainability-
Report-July-2011.pdff last accessed 11/11/2104
Zhang, J. J., Joglekar, N. and Verma, R. (2012) ‘Pushing the Frontier of Sustainable Service
Operations: Evidence from US hospitality Industry, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp.377-399.
Zink, K.J. (2006) ‘Stakeholder orientation and corporate social responsibility as a precondition for
sustainability’, Total Quality Management and Business Excellence’, Vol. 16 Nos. 8/9 pp. 1041-1052
32
